Punk rocker Tommy Gabel’s transiting announcement may be new and sudden to many people, but the path Gabel has taken to reach this point is familiar to tens of thousands of others who have plodded along the same difficult, heartbreaking and sometimes torturous, trail.

Gabel, in describing the feeling of disconnect between mind and body: “. . . it’s shitty, man. It’s really fucking shitty.” Then there’s the confusion about the decision, to which Gabel says ‘I may not know what the fuck I’m doing’, but Galen ends the statement with: “But there’s another part of me that’s completely, 100 percent sure.”

You’ll find a lot of trans people are nodding their heads in agreement with Gabel on that entire paragraph and more: terrified of rejection from a significant other, feelings of shame while growing up, praying…